Organisations
AG Universitätsverlage (University Press Association)
AG Universitätsverlage brings together publishers from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and South Tyrol; its aim is to support publishers in representing their interests externally and to promote the exchange of experiences. The publishers affiliated to the AG primarily publish academic publications from their own institutions.
Association of European University Presses (AEUP)
The AEUP is an organisation of and for university presses across Europe to help them build stronger relationships between them, to co-operate and share knowledge in order to reach common goals and to jointly address important issues in publishing. It is a strong collective group.
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP)
The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers is an association of non-profit, scholarly publishers. Among others, they represent the interests of society publishers and other small, specialist presses. They provide webinars, training and other resources on a range of subjects including open access, and have been stakeholders in recent reports, linked elsewhere on Copim Compass, about OA and society publishing.
Association of University Presses (AUP)
AUP is a membership organisation of non-profit scholarly publishers, publishing to high editorial and professional standards. It is a strong collective group.
Copim Open Book Futures
Copim is a community of people, organisations, and infrastructures working towards equitable and sustainable open access for scholarly books. It takes a community-led and values-driven approach to these. It is also, from 2023-2026, a Research England and Arcadia-funded research project into this topic. It consists of numerous work packages about equitable OA funding, experimental publishing forms, metadata and archiving for OA books, and other topics.
Forum for Open Research in MENA
FORM (Forum for Open Research in MENA) is a non-profit membership organisation to advance open science and open access throughout the Arab world, providing a platform for stakeholders to exchange insights and experiences about policy development and implementation.
Irish Open Access Publishers (IOAP)
IOAP is a community of practice for Irish open access publishers that promotes engagement with the Diamond Open Access publishing model (free to publish and free to read).
Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI)
IOI (Invest in Open Infrastructure) is an organisation that seeks to collate and platform open infrastructures, with the aim to to drive informed, strategic, and coordinated investment in and adoption of open infrastructure. Among its tools are the Infra Finder, which helps would-be adoptees of open infrastructure to find the right solutions.
JSTOR Open Access
The open access portal for JSTOR, a large scale platform and aggregator for (largely HSS) books, journals, images and primary sources. It could be used as an example of where the reader could look for content.
Library Publishing Coalition (LPC)
The LPC is an independent, community-led membership association of academic and research libraries and library consortia engaged in scholarly publishing. Their website features a range of useful materials. It is a strong collective group.
New University Presses (NUPs) in The Netherlands
A consortium of Diamond OA publishers in the Netherlands which aims to advance scholarly publishing.
OAPEN/DOAB
The OAPEN Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to open access, peer reviewed books, hosting their central repository, the OAPEN Toolkit, and also the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).
It aims to increase visibility and retrievability of high-quality OA publications and promote OA book publishing. It provides crucial services for a number of stakeholder groups, including PRISM: Peer Review Information Service for Monographs. This is a standardised way for publishers to display information about their peer review processes, aiming to provide transparency about publishing and thus build trust in the quality of OA books.
Open Access Australasia
Open Access Australasia advocates for and supports practical initiatives on open access in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. It is a large community, with several written resources, groups, directories, and others.
Open Access Books Network (OABN)
A shared community space / network for those interested in all things OA books, non judgemental, informal and open to all stakeholder groups. It also has its own FAQs, blog posts and other information. A great space for passionate conversations around OA books, it should be supported!
Of particular interest may be:
Open Access Books Network: ‘Mythbusters’ video series
A video series by OABN to dispel key myths around OA books that may put prospective authors off. These address often-asked questions in an approachable and helpful way, and the answers are provided by relevant external partners including OA authors.
Open Access Books Network: Around the World with the OABN
A series of blog posts which focus on OA books in a different country around the world, highlighting their regional experiences, problems and successes. This is an ongoing series that is still being updated, and unlike many OA resources provides (emic) perspectives from beyond the ERA.
Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA)
OASPA is a diverse community of organisations engaged in open scholarship with a mission to encourage and enable open access as the predominant model of communication for scholarly outputs. OASPA encourage and enable open access as the predominant model of communication for scholarly outputs - good to signpost to them in our resource.
Open access tracking project
Interesting community project and good source of information eg. tracking, collating and sharing on social media.
OPERAS Metrics
OPERAS, referenced elsewhere in Copim Compass in different capacities, offers metrics about the usage and impact of OA books, providing consolidated usage data for the publisher’s website but also other sites where the book is available.
Open Access Institutional Publishers (OIPA)
The Open Institutional Publishing Association (OIPA) was founded to connect and encourage open access publishing within the UK. Our mission is to create a new source of support and advocacy for established and emerging university presses and institutionally-affiliated publishing operations striving for open access. A fairly new organisation open to UK-based institutional OA publishers. Their website contains a list of useful resources which they have plans to expand as per member needs. Relatively limited but a reliable resource and probably the go to for UK-based IPs.
The Publishers Learning and Community Exchange (PLACE)
A helpful forum offering information on publishing processes and standards, developed by a coalition of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Crossref, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). Currently journals-focused.
Project Muse
Large scale platform (and aggregator) focusing on humanities output, not uniquely OA content, could be used as an e.g. of where the reader could look for content.
SciELO
SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) is an index and database of books and journals, which hosts several OA titles. It focuses on articles from Latin America and South Africa, in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. These are largely scientific titles.
SPARC Europe
SPARC Europe is a Dutch foundation advocating for open access, open science, open scholarship and open education within Europe. They collaborate with numerous European stakeholders to attempt to shape policy maximising the access and reuse of research and educational resources.
Thoth
Thoth is a non-profit, open metadata management and dissemination platform. An active and successful outreach campaign has enabled revenue targets to be met. Thoth integrates into third party platforms, these collaborations enable seamless access to Thoth's metadata management and distribution capabilities across diverse scholarly platforms.
Ulibros
Ulibros is the platform of EU_LAC. It helps publishers to facilitate and streamline metadata management, and also hosts a repository of OA book titles from across the region.